If a child is overwhelmed, remove them from the overwhelming situation.
If a child is hungry or tired, address those needs.
If they are throwing a tantrum in the department store, take them somewhere quiet and let them cry until they are calm. They’re probably just bored or cramped or overwhelmed and need a minute.
Address the cause of misbehavior, not how it manifests.
Make sure things like transitions, when you are leaving or moving on, are clearly communicated. Sudden transitions can be a huge trigger for tantrums. Best to try and mitigate with proper advance notice.
Explain your reasons to children when you are enforcing rules
Listen to children when they explain their objections to rules. You don’t have to agree with them all the time, but you should listen.
Understand that you, the adult, can also be overwhelmed, tired, hungry, and frustrated too. Acknowledge, to your kids, out loud, how these things are impacting you and apologize if you snap at them unfairly. Again, this is modeling emotional response.
Make the rules clear, simple, and consistent. Don’t change what the rules are based on your mood that day, or if you must, explain it before hand. If you normally let them play video games in the car, but you can’t today because your head hurts and your driving to a new place and you need to concentrate so you don’t want the sound to distract you- explain that to your kids. If they counter with “I have head phones. Is that ok?” Then, yeah. It’s ok.
If you need to have consequences for their actions, then actually follow through. Don’t threaten with consequences that you won’t really do. That makes it a lie, and makes it super ineffective in the future.
Make consequences fit the behavior. Explain why that is the consequence.
Some good consequences might include: cleaning up a mess they made, taking a cool down time for a few minutes, not getting to a special treat like a trip to the movie theater with their friends, etc. Remember, we are trying to avoid physical pain as a form of punishment.
Speak to children respectfully and prompt them to speak respectfully back.
Choices. Give kids a reasonable, manageable number of choices. Do you want to wear the green shirt or the blue shirt? Do you want Cheerios or waffles? Carrots or green beans? Do you want to give grandma a hug or a high five? Older kids can handle more choices than younger ones.
General rule of thumb: You aren’t trying to raise an obedient child. You’re trying to raise a thoughtful, respectful adult. And you have to be a role model, not just in what you say, but also in what you do.
How a person could read and claim to love the Harry Potter series and yet still support a facist regime confuses me, until I remember how many fans are obsessed with Snape, the Malfoys, and even Tom Riddle/Voldemort himself to the point of defending their actions and writing fanfiction where they are the real heroes, and saying how much they want to date them etc etc and well… maybe I’m not that confused anymore. *sigh*
Ok so we all know that the answer to “Where did Captain America learn to
steal a car?” is “Nazi Germany” but I think the more pressing question
here is when the fuck did this complete maniac get a driver’s license
Because ok, Mighty Mouse 1.0 is too poor to own a car, too short to
reach the pedals, has vision problems, and is a goddamn New Yorker in the motherfucking 1930s, why on earth would he ever have learned to drive?
So this little bastard can’t even tell the gas from the brakes, he gets
all beefified, he goes on tour with the USO. Unless one of the showgirls
coached him through stalling out a car all over some Hollywood back
lot, he still can’t drive. He goes to Europe. At some point, some genius
looks at him and thinks “this strapping specimen of American hunkhood
obviously knows his way around a vehicle, let’s give him a motorcycle,”
and Steve “no parachute” Rogers is like “how hard could this be?” and
promptly wraps himself around approximately eight trees at the same time.
So then he’s kickin’ ass, fightin’ Hydra, and it’s just months of Bucky being like
“give me the goddamn keys, Steven,” and Dum Dum and Morita endlessly
encouraging his fucking insane Fury Road bullshit, like the Howling Commandos just use “grenade” as code for “Rogers” when they’re reporting
why yet another truck has been destroyed beyond recognition. Yes, sir, another grenade, I agree, sir, it’s very odd that we keep losing vehicles in the same way, that’s the third this month alone
So then he’s in the future and SHIELD is sorting his shit out, and
they’re not going to force Captain goddamn America to wait in line at
the DMV, they’re all in complete awe in him and they’ve seen the old
reels of him on his bike, so when they issue him his driver’s license without any type of road test
they go ahead and give him a motorcycle license too
and steve is like …neat.
Ok so then Bucky is back, shit is settled down, everyone’s heading
somewhere and Steve gets in the driver’s seat and Buck’s like WHOA WHOA
WHOA are you people out of your goddamn minds?! Why is Steve driving, is
this some kind of mission, are we heading into a combat zone, is the
plan for the vehicle to get blown up?? GIVE ME THE GODDAMN KEYS STEVEN
And Sam is all “what are you talking about, Steve’s a great driver, I saw him jump his bike over a car once”
And Buck is all “yes but have you seen him use a turn signal?”
And Steve’s like, “Listen, we never needed to ‘signal’ our ‘turns’ in Nazi Germany.”
If you sometimes feel like it was pure, ridiculous hubris that you ever started a story that would take so much work and persistence to finish, I promise you, you’re not alone.
If you feel like you’ve already been writing forever and the “good bits” are still ages away, you’re not alone.
If you’ve been stuck for days or weeks or longer because you know what happens later but you don’t know what happens next, you’re not alone.
If you’re desperate to squeal about your beloved OTP but you feel like you can’t, because spoilers, and it’s driving you nuts, you’re not alone.
If you feel like you’ll never finish and you’re bound to fuck it up somehow, you’re not alone.
If you wonder if you’ve sabotaged yourself because who’s going to click through to a 28 chapter WIP, you’re not alone.
If you feel like you’ve been pouring your life into a single story for ages and will be for ages still and you don’t know why anymore because hardly anyone seems to care, you’re not alone.
If you can hardly even plan the further-away parts of the story or even think about them because thinking about them reminds you how absurdly far you still have to go and you get massive anxiety, please believe me. You are not alone.
I fucking live for your work. Like I love me a little one-shot or a medium-length fic but srsly give me that 100k+ (200k? 300k? yes pls) goodness.
I am constantly in awe of your ability to stick with your story, to keep your plot moving and your characters’ relationships developing like just damn.
I don’t judge if your updates are erratic. If you’re worried about too much time passing between updates, just know that I and so many others squeal with joy when we get that subscriber notification in our inboxes.
There is literally nothing more glorious than watching characters develop through a long-ass fic. Relationships, friendships, character growth? Sometimes after I’ve finished a longfic or I’ve gotten to the last update I’ll go back and reread the first couple chapters just to see how far my babies have come.
If you stop updating your fic for whatever reason, that’s okay. We as readers are just lucky to have been graced with your story as long as you chose to write it. You’ve been gifting us with time and effort for this long and we appreciate it.
As someone who has had multiple longfic ideas and either (1) got through two chapters and gave up or (2) was too overwhelmed by how much work it would take to actually write, you are my literal superheroes.
You are brave and persistent and creative and a gift to fandom, and if you ever need a pep talk I am here to love on you.
This post hit me like a fluffy towel fresh outta the dryer. Always good to get a boost like this – epic length long fic… what was I thinking hahahaaaaaaaaa
^^^^^Alladis. Longfics have gone out of style since the Old Days, and I miss those days – which makes them even more precious when I find ‘em. THANK YOU.
You know in the movies were the main guy has a friend whose a girl, who clearly has a crush on him, yet he abandons her to go with the popular crowd. But then by the end of the movie he realizes he loved her all along? I really want there to be a movie where the girl is like ‘no, you were acting like a dick. I’m not interested anymore’. Basically what I’m saying is that LAYLA FROM SKY HIGH SHOULD HAVE STAYED WITH WARREN PEACE
Me, a Gail Carriger dealer to my smol: Which books haven’t you read yet? Imprudence, Poison or Protect, Romancing the Inventor? I can bring them. You need anything else?
me, a Gail Carriger addict, to my tol: honestly just fuck me up
